


Road Trip

by Whedonista93



Series: American Herbology [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Herbologist Neville Longbottom, Neville is awkward, Original Character(s), Shape Shifters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 11:07:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21897304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whedonista93/pseuds/Whedonista93
Summary: Dearest Hepannah,I’m sending someone to you. A friend, one the war touched with a heavier hand than most. He’s rather at a loss what to do with himself at the moment.Love,Hemione
Relationships: Neville Longbottom/Original Female Character(s)
Series: American Herbology [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1577362
Comments: 3
Kudos: 35





	Road Trip

Hepannah leans back against her old Bronco, soaking in what little warmth the rays of the winter sun offers as she waits for the international portkey that’s bringing her charge to her to arrive. She takes the letter from Hermione out of her pocket again, habit more than necessity - at this point she’s nearly memorized the damn thing.

_ Dearest Hepannah, _

_ I have a favor… I suppose I should have asked, but as I’ve already made the arrangements, it’s a bit more of a demand, but you saw enough of the war I believe you’ll forgive me. I’m sending someone to you. A friend, one the war touched with a heavier hand than most. He finished his last year at Hogwarts and then completed a three year apprenticeship with Hogwarts’ herbology professor. He’s rather at a loss what to do with himself at the moment. I remembered how you went on about the plants in the States that can’t and don’t grow in Europe. Neville quite adores plants. I thought perhaps you could give him a bit of a tour. I’ve made arrangements for him to stay in the States for a year. I understand if you can’t stay with him all that time, but perhaps you could give him a good start? His portkey arrives at the border of the Colville National Forest and the Colville reservation at noon on the second of January, near the river. _

_ Love, _

_ Hermione _

_ P.S. A tidy sum has been transferred to your Gringotts account to cover travel expenses and the like - Harry insisted. _

She folds the note back into her pocket with a wry grin. As if she would deny either of them anything.

The telltale  _ whoosh _ of a portkey draws her attention. She nods a greeting to a few of the reservation residents she recognizes before zeroing in on a young man that can only be Neville. He’s tall, lanky - but well-muscled, she notes when he bends to lift his trunk - with dark sandy hair and a days worth of stubble. He might look dangerous if it weren’t for the fact that he was wearing a sweater vest. When he finally looks toward her, she registers a haunted look in his eyes in the brief second before she recognizes him as the young man who’d stood up to Voldemort when faced with Harry’s apparently dead body… and shortly after beheaded that damnable snake.

Neville holds still for a moment after the portkey arrives, regaining his equilibrium. The sharp cold of the wind helps. He’s bending to lift his trunk when he feels eyes on him. He turns in the opposite direction the rest of the crowd had gone and sees a woman leaning against a blue automobile and regards her as openly as she regards him. She’s dressed for the weather - heavy boots, dark jeans, and a fringed jacket, with a hat hanging down her back from a thin leather strap. The wind whips her dark braid across her back and dark eyes shine with a grudging respect. She looks vaguely familiar, but he can’t put his finger on precisely why.

Hepannah shoves away from the truck and balls her hands deeper into her pockets as she makes her way toward the young man. “Neville?”

He nods.

She offers a smile and a hand. “I’m Hepannah.”

He visibly relaxes. “Hermione said you’d be meeting me.”

Hepannah scoffs. “Presumptuous bitch.”

Neville’s eyes go wide. “Uh…”

She snorts. “I say that lovingly, I swear. Just the one trunk?”

“Yeah.”

She leans down and snags one of the handles. “Great. Let’s get out of the cold.”

“Don’t know many witches who drive an automobile,” he observes after she has to show him how to work the door handle.

“I’m not a witch,” she tells him dismissively, slamming the door shut once he’s seated.

“Uh, squib, then?” he asks hesitantly once she’s behind the wheel, warming her hands near one of the vents.

She shakes her head. “No.”

He shifts uncomfortably as she maneuvers the truck into motion. 

She chuckles and takes pity on him. “I’m… something else.”

The drive back to her little cabin is spent in silence.

Neville gapes when she lights the wood in the fireplace grate with an absent minded flick of her fingers.

She smirks. "The magic of my people is more elemental than what you're taught in your school."

Her home is small - a single loft bedroom with the bathroom, kitchen, and living space all downstairs. She replaced her awful old couch with a new futon when she received Hermione’s letter. She points everything out to him as she sheds her coat and boots, then sets about making a pot of coffee.

“Hungry?”

He nearly leaps out of skin. “Sorry, what?”

She chuckles, noticing he was distracted by the map on the table. “I asked if you were hungry.” She moves to join him at the table. “This is roughly the route we’ll be taking. We’ll spend about a week in each state, a bit longer or shorter in some, with travel time in between.”

“You’ll be with me the whole time?”

She nods. “As long as we get along and you want me to be, yeah.”

He nods. “Good. I uh… I don’t always manage the best, on my own.”

She reaches out and squeezes his shoulder. “Then we’ll stick together.”

Her mouth goes dry when he comes out of the bathroom in nothing but flannel bottoms later that night. “Forgot my shirt,” he mumbles sheepishly.

She shakes her head absently, eyes dragging from his pecs to his biceps. “I’m not complaining.”

He blushes.

She grins and shrugs. “Just putting this out there from the get go - no pressure, but you are welcome in my bed any time if you get lonely in yours.”

He tugs his shirt over his head, but not before she sees that his blush spreads all the way down his chest.

“Won’t bring it up if it makes you uncomfortable,” she offers.

“You’re not shy at all are you?”

“Not a bit.”

He takes a deep breath. “Just not used to girls giving me the time of day.”

“Their loss.”

He doesn’t believe her - that she’s really attracted to him - until they’ve spent a month longer than initially planned in California and she actually growls at a woman flirting with him on the beach.

His trunk turns out to be a rather handy gift from Hermione - she insists she got the idea from a magizoologists biography - that expands into a warehouse sized storage space when one steps into it. Hepannah may be something of a botanical expert, but she can’t remember ever having the passion and wide-eyed wonder for plants that Neville has. Within the first week, she writes to Hermione to ask how to expand and alter the space in the trunk, because Neville is already rapidly filling the available space, and they’ve only been to three of the forty-eight continental states on their itinerary.

He collects yarrow and baneberry and wild ginger and Indian-pipe in Washington. In Oregon, he manages to transplant three different types of manzanita trees into pots instead of taking cuttings to grow new ones, and harvests so many elderberry plants, she’s sure he’ll be able to brew potions from them for the rest of his life if he can get them to bloom. When they reach California, she stops trying to keep track of what he’s collecting, and simply answers his questions as he asks them. By the time they reach Southern California, he has a veritable forest growing in the back of his trunk, he’s collected so many different Evergreens. She takes him diving off the coast, using a combination of his charms and her more elemental magic to withstand the cold of the Pacific in February, and as she watches his face light up over the bright corals and vibrant sea life, she begins mentally planning how to create a sustainable environment for them in his trunk. She stays up all night completing it, and he nearly cries when he sees it. She breaks the tension by making a crack about licking saltwater off his abs.

They camp out in the desert on their way to Arizona and she sleeps better than she has in years when he ends up rolling into her and slinging an arm over her in his sleep. He seems amused by her obsession with cacti, and his collection of them grows to rival his evergreens in number. He kisses her for the first time, only slightly drunk, in the atrium at the Bellagio when she drags him through Las Vegas.

They stay with a tribe in the Rockies, when they reach Montana in late March, far enough up that there’s still snow banks blown up under the trees. No one greets them, despite the fact that she’d sent a message ahead they were coming, and it makes her tense. She gets Neville settled into their cabin and points him in the direction of a cave where she knows there’s an interesting assortment of fungi, even in these temperatures, and makes her was to the building that serves as something like a Council chamber. She lets herself in silently, but the occupants tense regardless. She steps into the light. Some relax and some tense further.

The chief stands and inclines his head respectfully. “Forgive us for not greeting you.”

She waves a hand dismissively. “What’s going on?”

Significant glances are exchanged around the room, but no one answers her.

She draws up straight, an air of command wrapping around her. “Do not make me ask again.”

“We have a Rogue,” the chief answers stiffly.

“Who?” She demands sharply.

He shifts uncomfortably.

She growls in warning.

“Wren.”

“What kind of Rogue?”

No one will meet her gaze.

She growls again, eyes starting to bleed into a golden amber.

The chief draws himself up. “She’s attacked two wizards. Killed one last week.”

“Why wasn’t I notified?” Hepannah demands as she toes off her boots and shrugs out of her coat.

“The local magical population has been warned of the dangers.”

She growls yet again, menacing instead of warning, as she yanks the door open. “My traveling companion is a wizard,” she informs the chief, “and if he is harmed…” she lets the unspoken warning hang in the air, tone promising retribution and bolts out the door before he can answer.

Neville is humming absently, some song from Hepannah’s muggle radio, as he sketches the mushrooms at the mouth of the cave. He turns, mouth open in greeting, expecting Hepannah, when he hears the crunch of snow behind him, then freezes when he finds a wolf, with a coat so dark it’s almost black, staring at him intently from less than ten feet away. He fumbles for his wand and it lunges. He trips back, and manages to grab a rock, knocking the wolf back enough that it latches onto his arm instead of his neck. It draws back, teeth bared, but is knocked off him, with the heavy thud of flesh hitting flesh, by a silver blur. He scrambles up and back and sees a silver wolf, much larger than the dark wolf, pacing in front of him, blocking the first wolf’s path to him. The dark wolf suddenly seems to hesitate and turns to retreat, only to be blocked by people, complexions and features similar to Hepannah’s, stepping out of the tree line, chanting. The dark wolf whines.

Neville shifts further back, wincing when the ripped material of his jacket catches against the bite on his arm. The dark wolf’s attention whips back toward him and lunges unexpectedly. Unfortunately for the wolf, lunging directly for him took its attention away from the larger wolf. The silver wolf leaps up, catching the dark wolf by the throat and yanking it’s head, tearing at flesh with a sound that makes Neville want to retch at the sound and at the sight of so much blood, vibrant against the snow. He slides down against the wall of the cave until he’s sitting, arm clutched to his chest.

The dark wolf goes limp and the silver wolf drags its corpse to the man at the forefront of the chanting circle and drops it as his feet with a growl.

The man bows his head, shame on his face.

The silver wolf pads back toward Neville, it’s form blurring around the edges the closer it comes to him. For a moment he thinks he’s passing out, then blinks up into Hepannah’s worried face. He feels her hands on his cheeks.

“Neville, look at me,” she demands.

He does. “Hepannah?”

She nods. “I’m here.”

He blinks, shakes his head. He looks past her, to the chanters, silent now, and the carcass at the man’s feet. He drags his gaze back to Hepannah and freezes. “You’re naked.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Wait! Wolf… where’s the other wolf?”

Her smile is patient, but amused.

“Wait, I, you… what?”

She shrugs. “Told you I was something else.”

His gaze whips back to the other wolf. “It bit me! Am I go-”

She puts a hand over his mouth. “We’re not werewolves. We’re Shifters. We’re born, not turn- wait, she  _ bit _ you?” The last bit comes out as a near inhuman growl.

Neville holds out his arm silently.

Hepannah curses, then turns and snaps out what sounds like a series of commands over her shoulder, in a language he doesn’t recognize. She stands and effortlessly tugs him to his feet by way of his uninjured arm. She stays at his side, apparently unbothered by the cold - or her nudity, which keeps drawing his eyes - until they reach the cabin. She waves her hand to light the fire with one hand as she shoves him into a chair next to it with the other. She grabs a heavy iron kettle and fills it with snow before hanging it over the fire and then sets about tugging him out of his jacket, her breasts bouncing lightly in his face.

“Er, Hepannah?”

She stops and looks at him.

“Could you, uh…” he waves vaguely toward her person in general and blushes. “You’re distracting, luv.”

She looks down at herself, blushes furiously - he hadn’t realized she was capable of that, kind of forgot after the third time she told him she wanted to climb him like a tree - and snags the first thing in sight, which just happens to be a long-sleeved henley she’d bought him in Oregon, and seeing her in nothing but his shirt, which barely covers her arse with her arms stretched up… well, he’s not sure it’s actually any better than her being naked.

“Sorry. I forget… I can magic clothes after I shift, but I usually just don’t. Modesty isn’t really a factor for most Shifters.”

“I’m not complaining,” he jokes weakly.

She almost smiles at him. She turns her attention back to his arm, apologizes when he winces at the fabric pulling against the wound, and simply banishes his shirt to somewhere else with a wave of her hand. The man from earlier knocks at the still open door.

Hepannah jerks her head without looking at him.

He enters the cabin and sets a woven basket at her feet, filled with cloth bandages and various poultices. “I-”

“Leave.” Hepannah’s tone brooks no argument.

The man bows and turns back toward the door.

“Burn her body. Bring me the ashes. Actually… wait for me before you burn her. Send me the old woman.”

An expression crosses the man’s face, and for a moment Neville thinks he’s going to argue, but in the end, he bows his head, despite the fact that Hepannah isn’t looking at him. “Of course.” He closes the door as he goes.

“Why?”

“This tribe buries their dead. She doesn’t deserve that honor.”

“The one who attacked me?”

Hepannah nods, dumping a few rags into the boiling water in the kettle and cleaning his arm as gently as she can. “She went Rogue.”

“What does that mean?”

“When a Shifter consumes human flesh, it gives them a sort of power boost.”

Neville balks.

Hepannah nods. “Exactly. It’s dark magic. Blood magic. And very expressly forbidden. There’s two types of Rogues. Those who go after non-magicals - they can usually be saved, brought back from the brink, rehabilitated, whatever you want to call it. And then there’s those who attack magicals. Magical blood is addictive. Rogues who go after magicals are essentially drug addicts, and they eventually succumb to the primal nature of the wolf, but they’re never satisfied with wildlife - they still go after people.”

“Oh… how many did she… before-”

“Two. One lived to warn the tribe.”

“That man?”

“The chief.”

“But he followed your orders.”

“He’s not a Shifter. He should have notified the Shifter’s Council instead of trying to handle her himself. I never would have left you alone if he followed the proper protocols.”

“You knew her?”

She dips her chin, once. “When we were children.”

“I’m sorry.”

She applies poultices and wraps his arm before digging a clean shirt out of trunk for him, and underwear and pants for herself. She has her pants on before he manages to maneuver himself into the shirt, and she helps him gently, leaving her hands resting on his waist and dropping her head to his chest when she’s done.

He wraps his good arm around her shoulders. “I’m alright.”

She shakes her head against his chest. “If I had been even thirty seconds slower…”

“But you weren’t. I’m okay. I’ve suffered worse.”

She steps closer to him, letting out a shuddering breath, and he lets her, just holds her close until someone knocks on the door. She doesn’t step away, just turns her head so her voice isn’t muffled by his shirt. “Enter.” A gnarled, hunched old woman shoves the door open, and the tension bleeds out of Hepannah entirely. She greets the woman with a smile then looks up at Neville. “I have to go take care of a few things. I’ll be back before dark.”

He squeezes her shoulders before releasing her. She shoves her feet into the boots and tugs on the jacket he hadn’t realized the old woman was carrying as she walks out the door.

The old woman watches her go with a fond expression before turning twinkling eyes on Neville. “She’s going to be insufferably clingy for the next while, you know.”

“I beg your pardon?” Neville asks.

The old woman chuckles. “Hepannah, deary. Shifters, wolves especially, are territorial. I’m mostly sure that she won’t actually piss on you, but she’ll mark her territory.”

“Me?”

“Of course.”

Neville eyes the old woman warily.

She rolls her eyes at him. “She trusts me. She never would have left me with you otherwise.”

Neville shrugs at that, seeing the truth in the simple statement. “Tea?”

The old woman smiles at him.

They’re at a magical bar on a reservation in Oklahoma when Hepannah gets in an all out brawl with three men twice her size after they threaten Neville. 

The bartender grabs Neville by the collar of his shirt and plunks him onto a stool when he tries to interfere. “Let her. You’ll just get hurt.”

“It’s my fight!” He protests. “They threatened me, not her. And I’ve seen war. I can take three backwoods hicks.”

She scoffs and pushes a drink in front of him. “First of all, the phrase backwoods hick sounds real funny with a British accent. And second, threatening you made it her fight. Don’t you know anything, kid?”

Neville just shakes his head, because apparently he didn’t.

“You do know what she is, right?”

Neville nods.

“And who she is?”

“Hepannah.”

The bartender scoffs. “Your girlfriend is  _ the _ Shifter, kid. Alpha. Top bitch. And short of pissing on you and sinking her teeth into your neck, she’s claimed you and everyone in our world knows it.”

Neville mutters into his cup and takes a deep swig of the lukewarm beer to cover his blush.

“What was that?” The bartender asks.

“She has pissed on me.”

The bartender blinks twice, then doubles over laughing. She collects herself about a minute later and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “Explain.”

Neville glances over his shoulder and confirms his suspicions that Hepannah is just messing with the blokes to draw the fight out. She winks at him then decks the biggest guy and literally bounces over him to the next. Neville rolls his eyes and turns back to the bartender. “We got in a bit of a row about a month ago. Don’t even remember what it was about now, I’ve never had the best memory, but she stayed a wolf for three days. I said something particularly doltish one of those days when we were hiking through the woods, and…”

“She pissed on you.”

Neville shrugs. “Squatted right over my boots. Guess she decided it was next best to telling me off.”

“Why didn’t you move?!”

“Too shocked.”

The bartender shakes her head then jerks her chin over Neville’s shoulder. “Looks like she done having her fun.”

Neville half turns and watches Hepannah methodically drag the men, all more or less unconscious now, out the door one by one, then skip back across the bar and plop down on the stool next to him hard enough it skids into his. He rolls his eyes even as he wraps an arm around her waist to steady her. She responds by wrapping an arm around his neck and kissing him hard enough he blushes. She ignores his sputtering about public indecency and turns around to face the bar. “Anyone else gonna have an issue with my wizard?”

A chorus of muttered negatives and shaking heads satisfies her enough to spin back toward the counter. The bartender sets two shots and a beer down in front of her - she downs the shots and half the beer in about thirty seconds.

“You’re mad,” Neville finally tells her.

“That isn’t news to anyone, babe,” she pecks his lips, “and you love me.”

He scoffs. “Buggered if I know why, but yeah.”

They both freeze a few seconds later when the conversation processes.

Despite the fact that he’s been a willing participant in her snogging - and she loves that word, it just rolls off the tongue in a way that making out doesn’t - him senseless for months, it hasn’t gone past that, and Hepannah’s libido can’t take much more. They’re in the middle of a swamp in Louisiana, dozing lazily above the water on the roots of an ancient cypress, when she loses her patience.

“Nev?”

“Hmm?”

“Why haven’t you taken me?”

“Taken what?”

She rolls her eyes and sits up to look down at him. “I’ve made it clear from day one you are welcome in my bed. And the past few months have made it clear you aren’t averse to the idea either, but you haven’t tried.”

He blushes.

She raises her eyebrows - she really thought he was past all that.

He sighs and sits up, turns to face her more fully. “I… bloody hell, I was raised by my gran, luv, and she’s bloody old fashioned. Some things got more ingrained in my head than others.”

“Old fashioned, like…”

He blushes deeper.

Her eyes widen. “Holy shit, babe! You’ve still got your V card?”

“Crass?”

She snickers. “Sorry. I mean, okay, look, now I feel like an ass, but seriously… you’re hot. You were hot in school. How did you not have  _ someone  _ offer?”

“How do you know what I looked like in school? I was chubby and bloody awkward.”

“You grew out of the chubby. And you’re still awkward, but it’s endearing.”

“To you, maybe, but not so much to girls who’ve known me since I was a kid.”

She swings her leg over his to straddle his legs and kisses him soundly. “Their loss.”

He hugs her close and groans against his neck. “It’s not that I don’t want you, luv…”

“But?”

He peers up at her. “What would you say if I asked you to marry me?”

“Yes.”

He marries her on a beach in South Carolina. They don’t make it to a bed.


End file.
